After seven years of marriage and two children, Azza's husband walked out on her and exercised his Islamic right to take a second wife. He refused to pay Azza any child support until a court ordered him to, and for four years he ignored her pleas for a divorce.

A women's legal aid centre in the poor Cairo suburb of Boulaq was finally able to persuade a judge to grant Azza a divorce six months ago.

"I began selling things from home to survive," said Azza, 32. "He spends all his money on his other family.

"I never saw a good day with him. At one point I broke down and told my children their father had died because we never saw him."

During her divorce hearing, which took place four years after her husband had left her, the presiding judge asked what harm Azza had suffered.

"She was abandoned - and the judge kept asking what harm had been done," recalled Azza's lawyer, Seham Ali.

Ms Ali, who works at the legal aid centre, said Azza was considered lucky in that her divorce trial lasted only 18 months. Other women have struggled for years to free themselves of marriages.

Ms Ali cited the example of Itimad, 45, whose husband left her 10 years ago.

Four different divorce cases that the centre has raised for Itimad over the past three years have failed, merely because the court clerk assigned to deliver the divorce summons cannot find Itimad's husband. He may have been bribed by the husband, Ms Ali claimed.

Women's rights activists in Egypt have campaigned for years to wrest divorce from the male preserve it has been for so long.

According to the 1929 personal status law, a woman can only file for divorce in cases of physical or psychological abuse, which must be proved by the woman.

But a man could simply say "I divorce you" three times, or get a divorce by filing a paper with the marriage registrar, in which case he would not even need to inform his wife.

Supporters of that legislation claimed it was inspired by Islamic law. But women's activists noted that it also conveniently ignored rights afforded by Islam to women.

The activists lobbied to guarantee more rights for women by writing them into marriage contracts, but opposition from the religious establishment torpedoed their efforts.

Last month, under pressure from the government, the Egyptian parliament approved amendments to the personal status law which, for the first time in Egypt's history, allow women to file for divorce on grounds of incompatibility.

After all manner of social disintegration was predicted by members of the male-dominated parliament, MPs approved the changes.

Under the new law, based on an Islamic precept called khula, women who want to divorce their husbands must return their dowries and relinquish all financial claims, including alimony.

The doom-laden predictions of male politicians that the law would encourage women to leave their husbands en masse - along with cartoons in national newspapers that showed men in chains and moustachioed wives with downtrodden men at their side pushing baby buggies - reflected the deep-seated fear of women's rights in this deeply conservative country.

Opposition to the amendment also came from Afghanistan's ultra-conservative ruling Taliban movement.

A Taliban spokesman said the changes were "a blatant violation of Islam". He said: "The Islamic world should protest against this move."

But liberals have argued that the new changes do not go far enough, saying it would be difficult for poor women to return their dowries and to renounce financial rights.

Zeinab Radwan, a dean at Cairo university's college of Arabic and Islamic studies, says it is not Islam that denies women rights, but the male monopoly of its interpretation.

"It is not a law that will destroy the family, but men's behaviour," she said. "Men in this country are not used to the idea that women have rights. They're used to the fact that they have power. This law is just a beginning - but still does not guarantee a woman all her rights."

Some 1.5m divorce cases are filed each year in a population of 64m. Currently 7m people are seeking legal separation.